


grace requires nothing of me (spent my whole life searching desperately)

by edelwoodsouls



Series: Dark Fics [1]
Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast), The College Tapes (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Atypical Adam Hayes, But also, Caleb's Pokemon Evolution, Dark Adam Hayes, Dark Caleb Michaels, Fluff, M/M, Post-The Bright Sessions, Pre-The College Tapes, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, these kids are so gay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:14:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27113146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edelwoodsouls/pseuds/edelwoodsouls
Summary: He never wanted to hurt anyone. He never wanted to be dangerous.But he can be.[When Alice goes missing, Caleb lets his darkness free]
Relationships: Adam Hayes/Caleb Michaels
Series: Dark Fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/581332
Comments: 10
Kudos: 9





	1. i'm standing guard (i'm falling apart)

**Author's Note:**

> title from the song 'one' by sleeping at last, because @exhaustedwerewolf and i have spent literal hours talking about how caleb is a 2w1 on the enneagram scale, and this whole fic is basically every 1's fears realised

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from the song 'eight' by sleeping at last because 8 is what 2s disintegrate to on the enneagram scale (ie when they're in crisis/stressed) and also that song is just. brilliant

They come for Caleb at night.

One moment, a dream: the dapple of sunlight through trees. An endless stretch of green-tinged sky, green fields, green light. The warmth of summer and laughter and fingers threaded through his own.

The next, a dark shadow. Clouds, heavy and bruised, choking the sun. They appear from nowhere, an invasion of his hazy verdant world.

He wakes up the moment they try to gag him.

The world is dark, lit only by the pool of moonlight filtering through the curtains at the foot of his bed. But he doesn’t need his eyes to sense them - the deadly, detached calm held solid in their bodies like cement. Not fluid and shifting as emotions usually are, but fixed, unnaturally still.

He yells out, struggles against them, his panic spilling out into the room in amber waves. It floods away the moonlight, the shadows, the steely hands against his limbs.

And the pressure is gone. Like a cloud passing briefly across the moon, the reaching fingers vanish. He senses only his own amber tidal wave, swirling around the space like a hurricane, pouring out into the hall.

He doesn't bother to check, to wait - he is drowning, needs air, needs space, needs _green_.

He jumps out of the window and flees into the night.

* * *

Adam can't sleep.

This isn't a new occurence, or even a rare one, but tonight the air is heavy on his chest, warm and thick against his skin. Rain has begun to drizzle gently against the window, choking the world in mist.

Summer drowns him, only feeling all the worse for his blue spells.

The only good thing about summer break is being in the same city as Caleb - just a few minutes walk between them rather than hours.

On nights like these, they still feel worlds apart. _Hamlet_ swims before his eyes, his body begging for sleep that won't come.

It's nearing two am when he hears the insistent tap on his window. Like a bird pecking its beak against the glass - loud, more frantic than Caleb's usual, dorky secret knock.

 _Something's wrong_.

He throws his book aside, sliding the window up in a single, adrenaline-fuelled motion.

Caleb tumbles into the room, sprawling onto the carpet. He's still dressed in what he usually sleeps in - shorts and _nothing else_ \- his hair flattened by the rain.

There's a vivid bruise beginning to form around his wrists.

"Caleb?" Adam crouches down to his boyfriend's level, careful not to touch him. He's shivering - but not from cold, Adam thinks - eyes darting around the room like a wild animal. "Caleb," he tries again, softly, "what happened?"

"I- uh- I-" Caleb's voice is no more than gasps. His eyes finally zero in on Adam, and he tries to level out his own panic. Be the island of calm in Caleb's storm.

"It's okay. You're safe. You're _with me_."

Slowly, so slowly, Caleb's breaths begin to level out. He takes deep gulps of air, as if he's been suffocating underground for years.

Adam grabs his Yale hoodie from the back of his chair; Caleb accepts it with a wordless nod, his jaw working in an attempt to find voice.

"I, uh- someone just tried to kidnap me."

" _What_." Adam's emotions spike immediately but he doesn't have the energy to try to be calm. "Caleb, what the _fuck_?"

"I don't know." Caleb shakes his head, pulling the hoodie over himself distractedly. "One minute I was sleeping and the next- fuck, the next they were trying to gag me."

"Fuck." His thoughts are beginning to swirl with panic, worst case scenarios, fear. His parents behind masks. His boyfriend splayed out on an operating table. Blood on a sterile floor. "Okay. Wait. Who's they?"

"I don't know," Caleb shrugs again, starts pacing back and forth with an energy that seems to leech into the room, rile Adam's anxiety up until it sits in a weight on his chest. If Caleb notices, he doesn't say, too distracted by his own panic.

The rain breaks out into a full-on thunderstorm. It feels pretty fitting.

"Do you think it was the AM?"

"I don't _know_. I didn't even see their faces. I just felt them."

"Wait, then how did you get away?"

"I-" Caleb stops short. His fists flex in and out in spasms, the way they do when he's trying not to say something, trying to figure out _what_ to say. "I don't know."

It's a _lie_. The realisation hits Adam like a slap in the face. He and Caleb _don't lie_ to each other, not after everything they've gone through. Not after missing information and secrets have caused them so much grief already.

"You're lying to me," he says quietly, not bothering to keep the hurt out of his voice. Caleb can feel it all anyway.

Caleb is looking anywhere but him. Staring out of the window at the moon, partially obscured by rain clouds.

"Caleb, what did you do?"

"I don't know!" The shout is too big for this small room, echoes between them like the snap of piano wires. He's never been more glad for his parents to be at a conference on comparative biological methods. "One moment I was being held down by, like, five guys, and the next they were all gone!"

"They can't have just vanished, Caleb."

"I mean, it felt like they did. I don't know. I just, I was so _scared_ , and I could barely contain everything, and then suddenly they were gone. Their calm. I couldn't find it anymore."

Something uncomfortable shifts inside Adam. "Because they weren't there anymore, or because they weren't calm anymore?"

Caleb stares at him, eyes wide and filled with horror. But it's not the horror of an awful suggestion, a _how dare you insinuate what I think you are._

It's the horror of being _known_.

Adam swallows, throat dry. "Tell me you just managed to hit one of them or something, and they got scared. You're really strong, right? You must've just pushed them away and they decided to regroup for help."

Slowly, Caleb shakes his head. "It... it started about a month ago."

" _What_ started a month ago?" He knows, he already _knows_ , and can't begin to figure out how he feels about it.

"I can... push emotions onto other people. Like, if they're feeling angry, I can make them calm."

"If they're feeling sad you can make them happy?"

Caleb's eyes go wide. "I never- I swear, I would never do it to you! I've got this under control."

"Do you?"

"Yes!"

"Okay then."

"You- wait, what?"

Adam folds himself into sitting back on the bed, looking up at Caleb. "I trust you, Caleb. Did you really think I would- what, hate you for this? Something that isn't your fault? If you didn't have this power, it sounds like you'd be zip-tied in a van somewhere right now."

He stands slowly, like approaching a scared animal. Caleb is still staring at him, startled. He wraps his arms around him, holding him close, as if he can still the tremors and fend off the world with nothing but his body.

"I'm just sad you felt you couldn't tell me," Adam says softly, voice muffled by Caleb's shoulder.

After a moment of hesitation, Caleb returns the hug, the fear uncertainty melting out of his body. They mold together, one entity, in perfect harmony. Steady breathing, steady heartbeats.

"I was so scared," Caleb's voice cracks with unshed tears. "I never wanted to hurt anyone. Or manipulate anyone. And if I can make people feel things, how am I any different from Damien?"

"You're nothing like Damien," Adam says fiercely, pulling away just enough so he can look into Caleb's bright green eyes. Puts a hand up to his face, letting Caleb lean into it. "You're Caleb Michaels. You're the love of my life. You're kind and empathic and you _care_. You're nothing like him."

Caleb lets out something between a laugh and a sigh of relief. "Thanks."

"I am _far_ more concerned by the people who just tried to kidnap you from your own home. How did they even get in?"

"I dunno. I might have forgotten to lock the back door before I went to bed, I guess? Me and Alice were playing quidditch..." Caleb's voice trails into silence.

" _Alice_."

Adam doesn't need empathy to feel the fear spilling back into the room. "Call her. Now."

She doesn't pick up. The phone continues to ring on every try, and eventually goes straight to voicemail.

Dead.

Sickness churns in Adam's stomach.

"This is my fault," Caleb whispers, hands running nervously so fast through his curls he's a breath away from tearing it out in chunks. "They couldn't get to me so they went for her."

"We don't- we don't know that," Adam tries to be the voice of reason, though the waver in his words betrays him. "Maybe she's just asleep? She's a teenager, you know they can sleep through anything."

Caleb continues to pace. The room feels thick and warm, panic seeping into the air, into Adam. It fills him up like rain filling a well, a steady rise that creeps up on him, invades his insides.

This panic that is not his, but has the familiar, soft edges of yellow he knows belong to Caleb.

"Caleb," he starts, panic that is only partly his own hitching the last syllable. "Caleb, stop."

The panic continues to rise, overflowing. He is adrift, drowning under a green sea that is far more yellow than blue.

" _Caleb_!"

The invasion vanishes, like a band snapping back from stretching. It feels like the air being stolen from his lungs - he feels empty, hollowed out, barely more than a flickering ember of blue.

"I'm-" Horror etches itself into every inch of Caleb's features. It's a sight that won't leave Adam's memory any time soon. "I'm sorry. I- I need to leave."

"Wait- Caleb!"

But Caleb has always been faster than him, far more impulsive.

In a single motion he vaults through the window and vanishes into the trees at the bottom of the garden.

Thunder cracks across the skyline, a mirror of Adam's world breaking apart.


	2. fault lines tremble underneath my glass house

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from 'earth' by sleeping at last

The house is dark when Caleb arrives home.

He knew what he was coming back to, in the churning amber pit of his stomach, and somehow the utter vacancy of it is still like a punch in the gut. No light, no sound, no quiet dream-emotions curling from Alice's window.

Dead.

He feels the world falling away from him, doesn't notice his knees giving until he feels the sharp pain of hitting the concrete.

The rain has come a steady stop, and the rest of the world is too still, too silent - but he is _loud_ , an infinity of noise he can barely keep contained beneath his skin. It swells up inside him, a mess of colour swirling so fast he can't identify the indivual emotions.

It's just too _much_ , filling him up, drowning him, and there is nothing to anchor himself to, nothing to keep him above water.

So he lets it out. Like a switch being flipped, the emotions flood out of him, washing across the street, crawling up the bricks of houses into windows. He feels the world, the people sleeping in the nearby houses-

Feels their peaceful dream-green lights snuffed out in an instant as they drown beneath him.

It's terrifying, the way his ability stretches suddenly so far outside his skin.

It's peaceful - no distraction, no overwhelm, just an endless sea of his own power. He breathes steadily, no longer choking to contain his emotions. As if they were always supposed to live outside of him.

It's _powerful_. The ease with which he reaches out, the feeling of a dozen minds inside him. Like lightning straight through him, like he could run for miles or choke the life from the people who just tried to kidnap him, who have kidnapped his little sister.

He throws up, retching directly onto the road until there's nothing left but acid burning his throat. His power, settling down to its baseline, familiar yellow, crawls slowly back inside him. It feels suffocating, after all that freedom, to be housed back inside a single heart.

He's never done anything like that before - feels dizzy with the power, with guilt of the thoughts that came with it. He's never wanted to hurt anyone-

Except that's a lie. He's always known it was a lie, has always been grateful that Adam can't read his thoughts or feelings in return. He's wanted to hurt people before, _has_ hurt people before.

And he wants to hurt these people now. _Needs_ to hurt them, whoever they are, get his sister back and keep them away from her.

Permanently, if needs be.

The revelation sits uncomfortably on his shoulders. Not the knowledge of what he might have to do - the knowledge of what he's _willing_ to do, capable of doing, with very little guilt churning in his stomach.

He's not a violent person. But he _is_ dangerous, no matter how everyone tiptoes around and pretends he isn't.

He stands shakily, the sun beginning to climb over the rooftops. His thoughts are too fast, too overwhelmed, suddenly shut back inside him. He needs to rest. He needs to think. He needs help.

He sets off into a run, ignoring the fear beginning to filter out of the houses, amber-sharp and awake.

* * *

"Someone tried to kidnap Caleb last night."

He doesn't bother with _good morning_ or _how's the conference_ _going_ \- what's the point?

His parents never promised _no more secrets_ , but he'd hoped _no more evil experiments_ might be implied, at least.

Apparently not.

"What do you mean, hun?" his mother is all concern - he can imagine the crease between her eyebrows as she holds the phone between her ear and shoulder, simultaneously editing her next conference speech or typing up notes.

"What do I _mean_? There isn't much room for confusion there, mom. People broke into Caleb's house last night and tried to drag him away."

Rustling on the other end of the phone, as if he is nothing more than a secondary concern. "That's awful. Has he been to the police?"

"I don't _know_. He ran off last night after he realised they took his sister instead."

"Maybe you should call the police."

"I'm calling _you._ "

"And why is that?" There's something delicate, light in her voice. _Don't go there_ , he thinks. _Don't break it. There's no going back._

He takes the plunge. "Because we all know who specialises in kidnapping atypicals."

The movement on the other end of the line stops. "Adam," his mom says, with that tired, frustrated tone of a parent talking to their kid about why they can't have the expensive phone they wanted for Christmas. "We've talked about this."

"We've _talked about this_?" he explodes. "Mom, I love you, but you can't really expect me to just get over you experimenting on people. You get that that's not something most people are okay with, right? And I'm sorry, but considering how interested the military was in empaths, considering the fact that Annabelle just happens to be visiting from DC next week, considering _everything_ the AM has done, are you really surprised that I'd assumed they were involved?"

He can almost hear her rolling her neck, getting ready to put her Military Scientist hat on rather than being a mom. "Adam, even if that was true, your father and I are not a part of the AM. We were brought in separately - yes, in part because of my sister - but we are not involved with them anymore."

"Really. You achieved the only successful transfer of atypical powers to a typical person and they just let you walk away."

Silence.

"They've taken his _younger sister_. Alice."

His mom sighs, something like defeat. "I'll talk to Anna. But I can't promise I'll find what you're looking for."

"Thanks." He already knows this will go nowhere, but it comforts him somewhat that his mom is trying. That she _does_ seem to have very little idea of what's going on.

"Do you have any idea where Caleb went?"

"No offence, mom, but you're the last person I'd tell."

He hangs up before she can offer any indignant protest.

Before he can admit that he has no idea where his boyfriend is.

He went by Caleb's house as soon as morning broke. The rain hadn't let up since last night, choking the world in clouds of rainforest mist which only added to the feeling he was trespassing on a haunted house. Empty and dead - no sign of a break-in, but no sign of people, either. His parents are up at the lake cabin, leaving Caleb to babysit.

They'll return to find both their children missing.

Because Caleb can't come back, can he? Just because whoever they are failed to kidnap him the first time doesn't mean they won't be back to try again. Probably with reinforcements this time, justify themselves that Caleb is dangerous, now that his ability reaches outside himself.

The image of Caleb's knuckles painted with Damien's blood rises in his mind before he can stop it. He had told Caleb he didn't scare him, and that's _true_ , but more because he trusts Caleb with his life. He's never scared _of_ Caleb.

He's scared of what Caleb will _do_. This boy who loves so much, _too much_ , that he would tear himself apart to protect the people he loves. This boy who is so kind, so scared of hurting anyone, right until he needs to be dangerous. Until he needs to be deadly.

(He can't help the small, guilty part of him that loves how far Caleb is willing to go for him.)

Adam needs to find him, before he does something he can't come back from. When Adam isn't there, there's no one to keep him green. No one to bring him back from the edge.

Or at least, someone to jump over the edge with him. He can't deny the anger churning in the pit of his stomach, that wants to help Caleb tear apart the AM, or whoever, brick by brick.

It was supposed to get better. Dr Bright, and Agent Green, and Sam - they were supposed to make the organisation _better_. He'd thought _at least_ they'd stopped kidnapping atypicals.

The lights click on in Adam's brain. If there's anyone who'd be willing to help Caleb burn down the AM (and doesn't it _hurt_ that Caleb hasn't come back to him) - it's Mark.

He picks up his phone again, thumbs through to the group chat. Hesitates for a moment, his fingers aching to just type here _Does anyone know what the fuck is going on?_

That might be a little too much just yet. Maybe there's no reason to panic. Maybe Alice will turn up safe and unharmed, and Caleb will land on his feet instead of plunging below waves, and everything will be fine and he go back to Yale for first term with a stable life and a five year plan.

He knows better than that, but still he clings to the hope like a drowning man, and scrolls on to Mark.


	3. an afterglow, an echo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from "joy" by sleeping at last. apparently im sticking to a theme

"Dr Bright?"

He hates how much his voice shakes. Even over the phone, she's always been able to tell the moment something is wrong. He doesn't want to worry her. Doesn't want to _disappoint_ her.

"Caleb!" Her voice is as level and positive as always; he can almost feel her calm spilling through the phone, filling him up. "How're you doing?"

"Uh, yeah, I'm okay...well, actually, no, I'm really not."

"What's wrong?" Her tone drops in an instant, the _concerned therapist_ who has never quite left even after all these years.

"I-" He stops suddenly. Has he thought this through?

He's sitting in a cafe, hidden away in a corner over a cup of peppermint tea - he didn't really know where else to go. Mark isn't answering his phone - fair enough considering its only seven in the morning - and his anxiety is beginning to climb his throat with alarming speed, begging to be let out, to remember the feeling of infinity.

The cafe is relatively empty, but he still doesn't want to subject the graveyard shift baristas to a panic attack just yet.

So he called his old therapist, his voice of reason, a guiding compass when he gets lost at sea. Dr Bright always knows what to do.

But Dr Bright also works for the AM.

"Caleb, you're worrying me. Talk to me. What's wrong? Has something happened?"

"I don't know who to trust, Dr Bright. Things are happening and I'm so _scared_ and I don't know who-"

"You can trust me, Caleb."

"Can I?" The accusation comes out like a shot, more aggressive than he meant it. He's just so _tired_ , hasn't slept, can barely think straight without an amber tidal wave drowning out his mind.

" _Yes_ , Caleb, you can." He doesn't need to be in the same room as her to detect the hurt in her voice. "Please, let me help you."

"Alice is missing."

"Alice?" There's something odd in her voice, almost like _relief_ , like this is the least concerning thing he could have said. "What do you mean, missing?"

What else was she worried he would say? Does she know his power is malfunctioning, or evolving, into something dangerous? Does she know he's toeing a line between himself and the entire world? Does she know he's one step from collapsing, or breaking, or doing something he's supposed to regret, can trick people into thinking he regrets, but doesn't?

"Someone broke into our house last night and took her," he says. "After they tried to take me."

"Do you know who? Are you okay? Where are you now?"

Her deluge of questions calms him somewhat. These are not the questions, the worried tone, of someone who knows what is going on.

That doesn't rule out the AM. Mark was imprisoned for three years before she even noticed he was there.

"I'm okay," he says, answering the easiest lie first.

" _Caleb_ -"

"Really, Dr Bright. I'm- well, I'm safe."

"That is far less reassuring than you think."

"I don't know who it was, or why they were there, or how they know about me, but can you really blame me for being suspicious of the AM? Of- of you?"

The silence that stretches between them is like a physical force.

"You think..." she starts softly, trips up almost instantly. "You think I would be involved in something like that? After- after everything?"

"No, Dr Bright, I- I don't know! I'm _scared,_ okay? I'm fucking scared and I thought that talking to you might help me think things through but I also know of only one organisation that might want to kidnap me or Alice and has the ability to do it so easily."

"Caleb, I promise, you have nothing to fear from the AM. Yes, the new director has put in some harsher measures than I'd like, but Sam and I are still at the head of things. We would never let anything happen to you or Alice. Even if Wadsworth was still in charge of this division, there would be no reason to come after you. You both have exemplary control."

Despite himself, Caleb feels yellow choking his throat like bile, as if rising up inside him just to prove Dr Bright wrong. It's like a pressure, a physical force pushing at his lips, desperate to escape. If he keeps it in much longer it might choose a more drastic exit. He imagines his chest bursting open, bloody and bone-flecked, a yellow spectre of himself doomed to linger, leeching off other people's emotions forever.

He never should have let Adam read him Hamlet.

Surely just a little won't hurt, right? Just to take the edge off. Just for a moment, so he can focus on this conversation, on pretending to be okay, without a wild animal clawing at his gut.

He can feel the emotions from the two baristas behind the bar. The midnight blue of overexhaustion churning with the bright electric of a caffeine high. A strong cocktail that shouldn't take too much of a blow if he lets off some steam.

But he's spent so long trying to repress this power, keeping it buried inside himself, that of course it leaps at the first chance of freedom. He inches the floodgates open just a crack, and before he can think twice a roiling, overwhelming force of yellow-orange bursts out of him, more explosion than wave.

The baristas vanish. The overworked commuters on the street outside - people he didn't even realise he was feeling in his periphery - vanish. The bank and the ice-cream store, next door either side of the cafe, disappear beneath the sea.

Everything is him.

Everything is quiet.

"Caleb?" Dr Bright's voice cuts through the ecstasy of release. She feels so small, so far away, in comparison to the stretch of his power. This is _right_. "Caleb, are you still there?"

He can barely speak. His words don't _need_ speaking, because everyone near him already knows them. They know his fears, his worries, his seething anger that tinges the edges of everything. There is no difference, now, between them and him. A hundred minds with singular thought.

"I'm okay," the words trip out of him with a breathless laugh. HIs body is shaking. With the effort? No, it isn't that- this is _easy_ , this is how he's supposed to be. He's shaking with _relief_. "I'm good, Dr Bright. I- I have to go."

"Caleb, wait-"

But he's already hung up. He tips his head back, leaning against the seat, and closes his eyes. Drifting in a sea of his own making, drowned beneath waves he only wishes had pulled him under sooner.

The quiet is something like bliss.

* * *

Mark doesn't answer his phone until nine am, and by that time Adam thinks he might have paced the entire length of the city in his anxiety. Not looking for anything - not consciously, anyway - but unable to sit still for even a moment.

The thought of sitting in a house his parents own, bought and built on lies. The thought of hovering outside Caleb's house in the vain hope he might come back, with the equal chance that those who stole Alice away might return first.

He doesn't stop ringing until Mark finally picks up.

"Adam," Mark's voice is groggy with sleep. "Why do I have 47 missed calls from you and 12 missed calls from Caleb? If you're looking for a relationship counselor, my sister has her own phone. Even if she doesn't know how to use it."

"Someone's kidnapping atypicals."

There's a clatter on the end of the line as Mark presumably drops his phone. Adam slows his frantic pacing, coming to shelter under the library's doorway from the pelting rain, fingers drumming out their excess energy on his thigh.

"Mark?"

"Yeah, Adam, I'm here-" His voice is distracted, accompanied by the rustle of fabric and thud of feet across floorboards. "But you can't just drop a bomb on someone and expect them not to freak out."

" _I'm_ freaking out," he hisses into the phone. Takes a breath, and tries to calm down, though it does little to regulate his racing heart. The world feels dizzy and drunk, the ground tipping and falling away from his feet. He's not panicking, he refuses to panic, but the tightness in his chest continues to grow. "Mark, I'm really fucking worried."

"I'd be worried if you weren't, Adam," Mark says, quiet and distant from the receiver.

"Not about that- I mean, of course I'm worried about someone kidnapping atypicals, especially since they've taken Caleb's sister and tried to take Caleb-"

"What?"

"-But I'm worried about Caleb," Adam takes a breath, shaky and sharp in his throat. "I think he's going to do something really stupid."

"They've taken his sister?"

"Yeah. Last night. He came to my house, but he ran off when... well, now he's not picking up his phone."

Should he tell Mark? About Caleb's new power, about what he thinks Caleb is capable of - and willing to do?

Does he want to? If admitting that means admitting that, if it came down to it, he would help Caleb do anything he wants to?

"He's called me a couple times, maybe I should try calling him back- hang on..."

Every nerve in Adam's body bristles. "What?"

"I've got a text from Joanie- no, wait, she's texting the group chat."

"Why?"

"Caleb called her."

Something twists inside Adam's stomach. Is he jealous? That Caleb would reach out to Dr Bright when he's rejected Adam's help?

 _No_ , Adam tamps down on that train of thought before it can run away with itself. He knows how much Dr Bright means to Caleb, how much of a guiding light she is, a compass in the dark.

As much as Adam wants to be that for him, he definitely doesn't trust his own compass enough to guide someone else.

"What did he say?"

"I'm not sure, it's a bit- she's calling a meeting. To talk things through."

"Things?"

"I don't know, Adam." There's movement on the other side of the phone, the slamming of doors, the sudden rush of outside noise. "You probably know more about anything than anyone else - you've _seen_ Caleb. How was he? Do you have any idea where he'd go?"

"He was..." Adam chews at his lip. "He was really out of it, Mark. I'm really worried about him. Has he- has he talked to you, recently? About his ability?"

Mark's noises stop suddenly, an eerie quiet through the phone. The rain is lighter now, but the wind has begun battering against Adam in a desperate attempt to push him over.

"What do you mean, Adam?" Mark says slowly, and just that tone makes Adam's heart flip. "What happened?"

"It's not- it's nothing, really, he just-"

" _Adam_."

It's not a tone that Mark uses often, that finality, non-negotiable. He's a pretty nice guy, most of the time - and a good influence on Caleb. But sometimes, there's cracks. Little hints of a man who lived with sadists and murderers, was treated like one, for years.

That guy scares Adam, the same way Caleb scared him last night.

"Caleb... he can, kinda, _push_ emotions onto other people now."

Silence. Adam's breath is caught in his throat. The wind is getting louder, harsher, and he has to hug the library wall just to keep standing.

"What does that mean?"

"Like, if someone is panicking, he can make them get calmer. If they're angry, he can talk them down."

"And the other way?"

"Huh?"

"Is it just calming people down? Or can he-" Mark's voice catches, just for a second. "Can he make people angrier? Can he make them sad? Can he make them... want things?"

"He's not Damien, Mark." Adam can't stop the cold fury seeping into his voice. He curls his fist around the phone so hard his arm is shaking. This is exactly how Caleb feared people would react, and Adam had reassured him otherwise.

Are they really going to be that quick to judge him?

"I didn't say that," Mark sighs, voice suddenly heavy with the kind of exhaustion that doesn't just come from sleeplessness. "Look, just check the chat, we're meeting at Sam's. I'm on my way now. We need to- talk this out. Figure out what's going on."

"The main priority is finding Alice," Adam reminds him. "Figuring out who tried to take both of them."

"Sure, kid."

And Mark hangs up.

Adam's hand shakes as he takes the phone away from his ears. Stares at it in his hand, the screen quickly blurring with raindrops.

The rain is really doing nothing to help his mood today. The panic nestled in his chest is only growing, along with that dangerous blue sea lapping at his heels.

And talking to Mark has only given the fear deeper roots. He can't pin down his thoughts, floating further out in a distant sea, except to feel that cold fear dragging at his bones. Everything undone in a single night of chaos.

He needs to find Caleb. He needs to help Caleb find Alice. He needs to stop the people kidnapping atypicals and keep Caleb safe.

Not for the first time, he feels that overwhelming frustration of living in an atypical world. Of being totally powerless in a reality of mind manipulators and fire throwers and government black sites. What can one small, weak human boy do against that? His only use is as an emotional bagaining chip - for _both_ sides.

He finds himself sliding down the wall, sitting heavily on the ground with a thud. The pavement is thick with rain, but it barely registers. He's been soaked through for hours at this point, as if the weather is just trying to hammer through the point that he is a breath away from drowning again.

If he were a book protagonist, this would be the perfect moment of pathetic fallacy. The hopeless hero, drenched in rain clouds as everything feels hopeless, before a sudden, unexpected ray of sun.

He stares at the sky for a single, ridiculous moment. Grey, as far as the eye can see. Of course. Pathetic fallacy is for fictional characters and people who think the world revolves around them.

Time is slipping away from him, and with every moment passing more disaster could be unfolding. He doesn't have time to wallow in self pity. He stands shakily, breathing slow to steady himself.

The wind begins to let up. Not a ray of sunshine, nowhere near. But a held breath, a world waiting to see what happens next.

A moment of reprieve, before the next inevitable bout of weather.

He checks his phone, and heads off towards Sam's.


End file.
